Thursday, July 30, 2009

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Citizen Journalism in Africa Programme invites you to apply for a scholarship to attend this year's conference 'Reporting Africa: 2010, Development & Democracy'. Highway Africa conference is the largest gathering in Africa of journalists and information workers where journalism and new media take the centre stage.

If you are interested in attending this prestigious event, send us a 500 word motivation about why and how you think your participation will benefit the Citizen Journalism Programme (CJA). We will also consider how active you have been in the CJA community when making the final selection.

Criteria

1. The applicant must be a member of a CJA participating organization from Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa2. The applicant must submit a 500 words motivation about why and how your participation will benefit the CJA programme and your organisation. Please note: Think about what you want to say and write a structured and informative piece.3. The applicant must have shown interest in the CJA programme by:

• Being an active user on the CJA portal,- records will show that• Interaction with the programme through other forms of communication• Having submitted at least 2 articles to the porta

4. You will be required to participate in specific workshops during the conference and also write an article with pictures and sound on the conference, and may be asked to makea presentation.

5. You will have to arrive on a specified date, stay for the duration of the programme and leave on a date specified by CJA. Should you not comply with this, you will have to re-imburse CJA for any costs incurred and CJA will not pay for any excess fees. 6. A full organisational profile must be attached to the application.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Associated Press has taken the first move to protect its content online, with plans to create a news registry to tag and track all AP online content "to assure compliance with terms of use," according to an announcement following a board decision.

"The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used," it adds.

"What we are building here is a way for good journalism to survive and thrive," Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP Board of Directors and vice chairman and CEO of MediaNews Group Inc, said in a statement. "The AP news registry will allow our industry to protect its content online, and will assure that we can continue to provide original, independent and authoritative journalism at a time when the world needs it more than ever."

AP added that the registry would initially cover all AP text content online, and be extended to AP members in early 2010: "Eventually, it will be expanded to cover photos and video as well. AP will fund development and operation of the registry through 2010, until it becomes self-sustaining."

The AP Board of Directors announced in April, at its annual meeting, that the news organization would launch an industry initiative to protect news content from unauthorized use. At a meeting today, the board voted to approve creation of the news registry.

"The registry will employ a microformat for news developed by AP and which was endorsed two weeks ago by the Media Standards Trust, a London-based nonprofit research and development organization that has called on news organizations to adopt consistent news formats for online content," the announcement explained. "The microformat will essentially encapsulate AP and member content in an informational 'wrapper' that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage."

The registry also will enable content owners and publishers to more effectively manage and control digital use of their content by providing detailed metrics on content consumption, payment services and enforcement support. It will support a variety of payment models, including pay walls.

In other action, the AP Board also voted to approve rate assessment reductions for broadcast members of the Cooperative. Under the plan, AP will reduce local TV members' basic text assessments by 10 percent in 2010

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Eric Osiakwan, a man of many talents and almost as many responsibilities, discusses hisAfrican Elections Project. Like Juliana, Eric was in Kenya during the electoral crisis. He found himself wondering, "How do we avoid these situations?" Somewhere between the polling stations where local vote counts were announced and the electoral commission, the vote count changed.

Eric and his friends realized that there's widespread interest in these elections, and widespread enough use of SMS that SMS could be used to report on and help cover these elections. The African Elections Project is built around a simple idea - let's take announcements made in local areas and broadcast them widely to help prevent the theft of elections. This involves reporters at polling places, SMS as a transmission mechanism, and the use of broadcast technologies like newspapers and radio to disseminate the information, as well as the internet. Eric is clear that this is a journalistic, reportorial project, not a monitoring one.

Based around this simple idea, AEP has grown to include a much wider set of information around elections. Sites for different country's elections include pictures from polling places, blog posts, links to news stories and a broad range of information sources about these events.

The main problem with AEP has been a fundamental problem with African elections - the project has been prepared to monitor elections in the Ivory Coast and Guinea, but both elections were put off. So far, the project has monitored Ghana's elections as well as Malawi's.

Ghana's election was close enough that it presented some real challenges for Eric and his colleagues' team. Their vote count suggested that the opposition was going to win, but the electoral commission hadn't yet certified the vote. They held off announcing, while one of their media partners went ahead and declared their projections, which angered the sitting government, which lost power.

Eric fields a thorny question about when one reports results - in Nigeria, it's possible that reporting these results before announcement would be illegal. He's very clear that the project stays within what's legal in each country, but tries to collect as much data as possible, for forensic reasons as much as publicity ones.

AEP's great success may be the replicability of its model - based on AEP training, a team is currently monitoring the Mauritanian elections using the AEP model.

The Highway Africa Conference 2009 hosted at Rhodes University, Eastern Cape South Africa is set to host the 8th edition of the SABC-Highway Africa New Media Awards. These unique and prestigious awards within the profession of journalism on the continent reward pioneering, innovative and creative use technology in doing journalism that serves Africa and its citizens. The Awards were pioneered 7 years ago to highlight the role that digital technologies play in journalism and the media.

The 13th edition of the Highway Africa Conference, September 6-8, Rhodes University, calls for the submission of nominations for the 8th SABC – Highway Africa in 3 categories:

·Individual/Student – awarded to individual persons who design or appropriate new affordable applications of communication technologies to overcome the limitations of existing infrastructure and/or capital resources.

This year an exciting new partnership with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA – www.osiwa.org) will see 5 new categories added to the prestigious The SABC-Highway Africa Digital Journalism Awards.

The Highway Africa-OSIWA ICT Journalism Awards for project aims to:

encourage media professionals to produce well researched and informed stories on ICT usage and policies

encourage innovative use of new media in journalism in Africa

The 13th edition of the Highway Africa Conference, September 6-8, Rhodes University, calls for the submission of nominations for the Highway Africa-OSIWA ICT Journalism Awards, to be awarded at the 8th SABC – Highway Africa in the following 5 categories:

Best story on ICT use in communities

Best Woman ICT reporter

Best story on ICT policies in West Africa

Best story on ICT and public governance

Best story on ICT use by media

The above awards are restricted to entries from West Africa (both Anglophone and Francophone)

Broad Criteria for entries

The judges will consider the use of new media technologies to:

·advance press freedom on the continent

·encourage social empowerment amongst marginalised communities

·highlight innovative and creative applications of global technology for the benefit of the continent's overall media development

Technical Requirements for all entries

Digital/Online platform must be functional and updated

Multimedia components, print, web and post

Aesthetic appeal (creative use of limited resources)

Stories should have been published in the period August 2008 and July 2009

Please supply details of the media in which article will have been published

The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entertained after the closing date and when the final announcements are made

Highway Africa reserves the right not to award prizes in any category.

Submissions are to be made electronically to: awards@highwayafrica.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it copied to c.kabwato@ru.ac.zaThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The closing date for the nominations is 21 August 2009, 16:30 Pretoria Time.

Winners will be announced at the prestigious SABC – Highway Africa Awards ceremony on the evening of Tuesday, 08 September 2009.

For more information please contact awards@highwayafrica.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it